THIS HOUSE WAS ERECTED IN 1928

BY FEDERICO GASPARINI-BONDI

AND HIS CONSORT MARIA LAURA

TO ENHANCE THE YOUTHFUL JOYS

OF THEIR CHILDREN AND FOR

THE EVERLASTING DELIGHT

OF THEIR DESCENDANTS

Everything about the little plaque was as charming as its message. Each of the marble corners had been lightly scrolled; the lettering was elegant, and surmounted by an incised decoration of leaves and tendrils. It provided, Mrs. Drew thought, a smiling counterpart to the sorrowful monument she had just seen on the mountainside.

She was reading it over, and wondering whether “delight” was in fact the best way to translate diletto, when a quick step sounded and the door opened.

The man who stood there gave no sign of having been roused from sleep. That he was a servant was evident only from his way of holding the door as if it were his responsibility rather than his property. He was trimly dressed in light clothes. His face was dark, blunt but not ill-natured, and he had a deep scar on his cheek—a semicircular scar as precisely inscribed as one of the curved decorations on the marble plaque.

She begged his pardon. She had lost her way up there on the mountain. Did he know the village of Sant’Andrea?

He knew two of that name. One was in this direction (he pointed so vaguely that she was reminded of her conjecture about the siting of the house), and the other was in that.

They were both silent, confronting this information. Then he stepped back and went on courteously, “Won’t you come in? A glass of lemonade—”

She thanked him, but she must get on to Sant’Andrea. She was going to visit friends there. If she could telephone, perhaps?

Inside the house, a man’s voice called out. “Fulco! Someone lost? Bring them in.”

Fulco said, again motioning to her to come in, “Il Conte.”

A woman called from upstairs, “In the salotto. It’s cooler there. I’m coming straight down.”

“La Contessa.”

Mrs. Olivia Drew did enter the house, but hesitantly, feeling that there had been a mistake, that some other lost traveler was expected. Ringing steps approached her from the back of the house, and lighter ones down the curving staircase at whose foot she found herself. Nothing about her presence in this unknown house could justify an eager reception; waiting there, she felt sure to disappoint.

They appeared at the same moment, the Conte short, stout, and twinkling, his consort taller only by her coil of faded hair, fragile, dressed in gray. Before she had properly presented herself, Mrs. Drew had been conducted from the stairs to a doorway, and before she had properly told her story she was seated on a sofa and lemonade had been sent for.